Cabeceras villagers unfurl their peace banner, which they hope will mark a turning point in the community’s fortunes.
Photograph: Federico Rios/Christian Aid

In a schoolhouse in Cabeceras in Colombia on the banks of the San Juan river, village leaders, teachers and others gather for a ceremony to mark what they hope will be a turning point in their lives. A large peace banner is unfurled and raised to waist height. Each person touches it, as if the sign, to establish their territory as an internationally protected “humanitarian zone”, is sacred.

A solemn blessing is read and repeated: a memorial to those who have been “disappeared”, murdered, silenced and displaced; those whose names they know, those they don’t.

“For the four men who disappeared on the river Naya in April,” says one woman. “For my brothers,” says Siode Arbolia, 35, tears welling up. Her young brothers, Elcias and Didier Arboleda, were among five people from Carrá, a neighbouring village, shot dead near their homes in March 2017 by an armed group.

The banner, placed overlooking the river at the village entrance, is a statement of sorts: it shows outsiders that the community has the backing of the international NGO Christian Aid, as well as the Inter-church Commission on Justice and Peace (CIJP), and that its leaders have denounced any collaboration with armed groups.

The San Juan and Naya rivers are two of Colombia’s main drug-trafficking routes and the communities are surrounded by armed groups vying for control of their land. Flowing more or less parallel to each other, on either side of Buenaventura, the country’s main port, the rivers carry shipments of cocaine from fields and laboratories deep in the jungle to the Pacific coast, where they are dispatched to international markets, including the US and Europe.

Earlier this year European officials warned that the rising availability of the illegal drug on the streets of the continent was a result of increased production in Colombia. New data shows coca cultivation had surged to a record high; the amount of land used to harvest the coca plant soared by 17% in 2017 in comparison with the previous year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). In Britain debate has centred on drug users fuelling rising violence on the streets of London and elsewhere.

In the Valle del Cauca department, cocaine trafficking and the battle to control land on which it is grown is causing such brutal conflict it is driving people to flee the territory their ancestors cultivated for centuries.

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To the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities who live on these rivers, identifying which armed group is responsible for the violence, harassment and terror inflicted on them is not an easy task. One thing they all have in common, though, is drug trafficking.

Dagoberto Pretel, the legal representative of Cabeceras, a community of a few thousand people, said: “We know that all the different actors are moving around on the river and there is combat between them to control this region, so that they can move their product.” He added: “If there weren’t drug traffickers, we would live like we did 15 or 20 years ago. We would live in peace.”

Two years after the government signed a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia (Farc) guerrillas, aimed at bringing an end to the longest war in the Americas, which left 220,000 people dead and nearly 6 million displaced, many armed actors remain. They include the military, paramilitaries, the police, the National Liberation Army, or ELN – an insurgent guerrilla group – as well as a rising number of dissident Farc groups.

Despite pledges by the government and Farc in the peace agreement to substitute illegal crops with alternatives among farmers and eradicate vast tracks of coca leaf, peace remains a distant hope for people in Cabeceras and the surrounding villages.

After years of violence, people learn not to speak of crimes they witness, and many go unreported. While the authorities carried out an investigation into the killing of five people from Carrá, it was inconclusive. There is speculation that it was carried out by ELN guerrillas or set up to look like them. The ELN, which is in talks with the government, has grown in strength and is occupying territories left by Farc, which used money from drug trafficking to fund a 50-year war.

John Hilber Mosquera, 31, a fisherman, who discovered the bodies at the village dock when he went to get petrol, said he found a black and red flag that said ELN. “It was stuck between the bodies,” he said. “There is a new paramilitary group in the area. Maybe they wanted to send a message to people not to join that group. Maybe they wanted to warn us? I don’t know.”

The killing sent shockwaves through the Afro-Colombian community. Most people from both villages fled. The people of Cabeceras returned four months ago, but those from Carrá are too terrified to return.

“My family are having a very hard time right now,” said Arbolia, a mother of four. ”They don’t have work, they don’t have money, and we have lost two brothers. One of them had two young daughters.”

Drug trafficking is not the only thing driving violence and displacement among local communities. In Valle del Cauca, which is rich in resources, including gold and coal, fresh water and lucrative crops, territory is also a prize pursued by powerful interest groups. Father Alberto Franco, a leader at the ICJP, said three factors lay behind the violence. “The first is control of the land, which used to be controlled by the Farc guerrillas. It is now ELN, who are fighting with the military, the police and the paramilitary. The second is the internal armed conflict, and the third is drug trafficking.”

Franco, who was instrumental in bringing the concept of humanitarian zones to Colombia, says the construction of a freshwater port in Buenaventura region was also a factor in the displacement of indigenous people from the lower stretches of the Calima and San Juan rivers. “Violence is essential to remove poor people from areas to pave the way for development projects,” he said. “With violence, people have learned that if they see or if they hear, they don’t talk.”Buenaventura, where many displaced rural people end up, is one of the most dangerous cities in South America for local people, especially from the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, who face racial discrimination.

At a meeting last week with Christian Aid, which is helping displaced rural communities, leaders spoke of children being paid 100,000 pesos (about £25) by paramilitaries to carry out killings, of requiring armed guards to travel outside their communities and of the threats they face.

Siode Arbolia’s two young brothers were shot dead near their homes last year. Photograph: Federico Rios/Christian Aid

Nayibe Valencia told how her husband, a teacher, brother and two other relatives disappeared on the Naya river in April. “The violence has begun to affect us,” said the mother of two. When she reported it, the authorities told her to come back with proof.

In recognition of the danger she now faced, however, she was given a 24-hour armed guard by the unit for national protection. The leaders accused the government of not doing enough to investigate the 66 disappearances on the river since 2001.

In a dilapidated schoolhouse on the outskirts of Buenaventura, where 260 people from three communities from the Wounan tribe have been displaced for two years, people say they are desperate to return to their lands.

Ernesto Chililiano, 46, a father of six, fled after an army bombing raid aimed at an ELN camp exploded near his home on 7 February 2017. “The leaders are nervous that if we go back we will be killed or threatened,” he said. Chililiano, whose 13-year-old daughter Norellia died in 2011, 12 days after she was recruited by Farc, said the peace accord had changed nothing as one guerrilla group has been replaced with another. The ELN is now trying to recruit children, he said.

Flávio Pivaza Opua said while the Wounan did not cultivate coca plantations in their territories, they had sympathy with their Afro-Colombian neighbours, who did. “They are not going to exchange a coca plantation worth 500,000 pesos for three or four plantains,” he said. Estimates suggest growers receive 1% of coca’s value.

Pivaza Opua accused the government of reneging on pledges to protect those displaced by conflict and armed groups, and urged the government to listen to civilian groups.

Asked if he had a message to those in the US and the UK who buy the illegal drug, he said: “To the far-away communities I would say, ‘Be careful. Lives are worth more than a few hundred dollars.’”